Who does the checking?

We received the first order of a popular calendar used by congregations yesterday. The calendars were right on schedule arriving just about the same time that they did last year.
We were preparing to ship about a dozen of them to various customers when Cara on our staff noticed something strange inside. The month of May contains all of the liturgical feasts and fast days and other information. That’s good. But, why does the month look strange? Oh, there it is. The numbers for each day of the month are missing!
May 5th, my sister's birthday, is which day? There is no way to tell on the calendar. This is not helpful.
Immediately I contacted the publisher. They replied today, in part, “Thanks so much for bringing this to our attention. This is a manufacturing error and we’ll have it redone as soon as possible.”
It was a topic of repeat conversation amongst our small staff yesterday. So who does the checking of a calendar before it is shipped to retailers? Anybody? It seems that it would be a prudent activity.
Every package that we ship to a customer is checked by someone other than the person who filled and sold the order. And still, some errors slip through.
I wonder how large was the print run for that calendar? I wonder how long it will take the publisher to “have it redone.”

Life is full of adjustments and compromises, so is the life of a store.

Fifteen years ago, when we moved into this current building, we set up the Shipping and Receiving area. It was a handy arrangement. We could receive deliveries and ship to customers while also being available to help visitors in our bricks and mortar store as well as those on the phone.
In these past fifteen years the numbers of products and sales has increased, as it should have. We now process several times more items in the same space and the same configuration of counters and computers that we did when we moved in here.
It is past time to increase the size of the shipping and receiving area. It is also time to rearrange the store to handle the increased traffic. More space required in Shipping and Receiving, in a building of finite size, requires a reduction of space for other things. We will use the space where the children’s books have been for this enlargement. That means a chain reaction. Children’s books will be moved further back in the store. This means that Fiction, Biographies, Poetry, Cookbooks, and others have to move to make room for Children’s. It’s like the classic slider puzzle game where you need to move other tiles so that you can move the one that you want to move.
These named book categories are in the back of the store. We have begun the process in the front of the store by consolidating the displays of books and gifts to make room for the books that need to be moved so that there will be room for Children’s books to move over a few feet so that the Shipping and Receiving areas can expand.
Life is full of adjustments and compromises, so is the life of a store. Hopefully this adjustment will improve the lives of our customers and of our staff, at least concerning the shopping of books and gifts. We are not decreasing the number of books in the store. We are simply reorganizing them, hopefully for the better.

Five eager possibilities

Jackie on our staff gave us her resignation notice. She is moving on to other life adventures. We need another part-time staff member. Using our monthly newsletter to our local frequent buyers members we announced the job opening. Within four hours we had five responses of interest, four by return E-mail and one by phone. Nancy and I knew that we could not eliminate any one of them with the information we had at hand so we agreed to interview each candidate.

Do we really want to eliminate an enthusiastic college student whose major focus is a polar opposite from retail store clerk? Can we say for certain that the teacher who is retiring within the month is too old or too anything to be eliminated from consideration? What about the twenty-something college graduate who is trying to figure out what life holds next? Any one of these, or the others not described here, could be a very good fit for us when we look past our stereotypes.

We will take the time to interview each candidate. By paying close attention, and doing our homework on each one, hopefully we will find the best fit for this ministry-which-is-the-store.

As they used to say in old radio (that communication device without pictures to which you could only listen and not respond) broadcasts (the messages were sent wirelessly through analog signals from single point signal towers), “Stay tuned.”

The 8:00 AM funeral service

The congregation that I attend has a feeding program for those in the community that need it. The congregation has a strong social action commitment that I appreciate and hope to support more than I am presently. (I’m new to this congregation and am just figuring out what talents of mine can be helpful to the congregation.) They offer a free breakfast several mornings each week.

Last week a man who regularly attended the breakfasts passed away during breakfast, in the room where breakfast is served. His death has affected that feeding community deeply. The congregation is having his memorial service at 8:00 AM. It will be, of course, followed by breakfast.

8:00 AM is the appropriate time for that worship service. It is being held at the time and place where those who are most affected by his life and death will meet most easily. This is one more action that I admire about this new-to-me congregation. Their commitment is to meet people in a time and place that best meets their needs.

Small bank Big Customer Service

I’m still processing the feelings of a meeting this morning.

We moved the store’s account from a huge multinational bank to a local bank (Seattle Bank) several months ago. Each of two times that we have taken our credit card terminals off site to large meetings where we have sold books the terminals have malfunctioned and caused us considerable stress and accounting problems. A couple of weeks ago the event was large and the credit card malfunctions were large too.

Two individuals from Seattle Bank worked with us closely and long and hard. We phoned one of them Saturday evening at 8:45 and he returned the call Sunday morning at 10:00 to help us work with the malfunctioning terminals. He then spent many hours the following week working out ways to capture all of the credit card transactions.

This morning the manager of our local Seattle Bank visited us at our store and he brought with him the district or regional manager (I missed that specific detail.). That manager showed intense interest in the problems that we have experienced with the credit card terminals and the technical support that took a lot of time but often were of little help.

He took notes. And more notes. He asked probing questions and wrote down our answers. At one point he borrowed a highlighter and highlighted one section of notes. Before they left our store the manager assured us that our descriptions and his notes were going up the line and would make a difference for the future. Our local bank manager then gave us each a gift certificate at a small locally owned delicatessen that is also a member of the bank as a thank you for our time today.

Whenever I can I encourage individuals to shop with local independent businesses. The reasons include the real situation that those who are making their living by direct contact with their customers know their products better and give better customer care than those who work for the big megastore. I did not expect to receive such care and concern by my bank. I have no doubt that I would not have received that kind of personal care from our previous major name bank.

I’m still somewhat overwhelmed by today’s meeting.

One of life’s joys, or is it embarrassments. And, is there a difference?

A “little old lady” phoned a few minutes ago. In her sweet and kind of shaky voice she asked, “Where are you located?”

I replied, “We are located in Seattle on Stone Way North, between the Wallingford and Fremont neighborhoods, just north of Lake Union and south of Green Lake.”

She replied, “Oh. Well, I’m in Denver Colorado.”

I assumed that she was asking one question, a local question. She was actually asking a continental question.

The laugh is on me!

I could have clarified with her first where she was located in order to give her an answer that met her needs. I just assumed too much.

Being on both sides of the wall

A young man was dieing from cancer. Near the end of his life the author writes:

“And he told me that the day before, he had been lying in bed, thinking about getting up, and suddenly out of the corner of his eye he had become aware of some sort of a barrier or a wall just behind him. As he noticed it, he realized that he had always known it was there but he had never seen it before. I encouraged him to say more, ‘Well, I know I’m here on this side of it. But at the same time, I know I’m on the other side of it too. I don’t know that that means. Do you?’ ‘…It makes me feel good….Sort of peaceful and joyful.’

Two days later he died.”  -- Copied without permission from Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, by Rachael Naomi Remen, Riverhead Books, 1996, 2006, paperback, page299.

This is a new thought to me. Part of us, part of me, could be on “the other side” and have always been there. What does that tell me about dying?

One description of dying is that it is something like our birth where we had lived for many months, our whole existence, in a dark, warm, liquid world and at birth we are released from that world into a world that is light, cold, and dry, but it is good to be in the new world. And the corollary is that likewise it will be good to be in the “next world.”

If we have all along had part of us on the other side of the wall then our dying here won’t put us into a new place but we will remember it when we get there from the part of us that has been there all along. It won’t be a strange new world because we will recognize it as part of where we have been.